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Forum:2017-12-08 (Friday)
Discussion for comic for . Genius is an infinite capacity for making edits. ---- Aha! Maybe Trelawney and Agatha will end up swooping down to rescue Tarvek! What is that partial word "inspecla-" at the edge of the first panel? And do we know anything about how that train is propelled through the tunnel? I thought Agatha's "You do?" rather than "You do?" sounds just a little insulting to the Spark of the Realm. But never mind; I'm really happy Tarvek isn't just being abandoned. Bkharvey (talk) 06:21, December 8, 2017 (UTC) :Never mind the word! Does that coral reef it's written upon have an eye growing out of it? Bosda Di'Chi (talk) 12:00, December 8, 2017 (UTC) :It's a giant octopus-like construct, not a coral reef. Looks like it is "inspecla[]-ing" the train tube. My guess is underwater inspection/maintenance. Scientician :: I thought it was just advertising, like the Guiness whale MasakoRei (talk) 14:06, December 8, 2017 (UTC) :: Yeah, either mechanical or security inspection. --Geoduck42 (talk) 16:33, December 8, 2017 (UTC) The train has no wheels, and the hoops do not appear to be actually supporting the tube. Magnetic propulsion is possible, but would be a severe inconvenience to clanks or anyone carrying ferrous objects. So I'm guessing pneumatic propulsion. A prototype pneumatic subway was actually built. -- SpareParts (talk) 00:03, December 9, 2017 (UTC) : You may have already given this more thought than the Foglios have. :-) As for Tarvek, now that she's been mentioned, Jenka is the most likely to turn up as a rescuer for him, possibly after the pirates and Smoke Knights have wiped each other out. --Geoduck42 (talk) 19:24, December 9, 2017 (UTC) : Jenka... Agatha... Trelawney... Zeetha... Judy... Violetta... even, in their way, Zola and Lucrezia: When I started reading GG, with Volume 1 of course, the way everyone was overlooking Agatha led me to believe that the title "Girl Genius" meant "the one girl who, unlike every other woman, is a genius." Now, having met so many more strong female characters, and (since Zola turned out to be faking it) no stereotypical weak and clinging ones, I look back on those early days and wonder how, living in such a world, and having even lived at Skifander, Klaus can have been so quick to overlook the signs Gil saw about who the mystery spark was. Bkharvey (talk) 20:19, December 9, 2017 (UTC) :: I'm not sure what you mean. Agatha is the "Girl Genius" because even for Sparks, she's head and shoulders above the others. She broke through at five and outsmarted some of the strongest Sparks on the continent. Her being a genius doesn't mean the other female characters have to be weaklings and morons. I don't even get why you'd expect that. As for why Klaus dismissed Agatha early in the story: mostly because everyone in Beetleburg thought she was an incompetent idiot. Sparks are usually smart, promising students prior to breakthrough. With her Spark suppressed by her locket, Agatha really didn't qualify. He didn't ignore her because she was a woman. Why would the man who slept with Lucrezia think that women are harmless morons? MasakoRei (talk) 22:31, December 9, 2017 (UTC) :::: Remember that none of what you point out is obvious back in volume 1. It is clear to the reader in v1 that Agatha is the protagonist, and therefore the Girl Genius of the title, but in our world, even today, women in tech have to fight to be taken seriously. Women weren't admitted to Oxford until 1875 and couldn't be "full members of the university" until 1920. The US did a little better; our first coed college was in 1787 (Franklin College). So, even though Plato had female students at his Academy, being taken seriously as an intellectual would have been an uphill struggle for women in the Victorian era. :::: "Everyone in Beetleburg thought she was an incompetent idiot" only partly because of the locket. It prevented her from being a Spark, but judging by her bedroom at the Clay household, it didn't make her stupid or turn off her intellectual curiosity. Even now, having read all (so far) of GG, when I re-read v1 it feels to me that the Beetleburg people would have recognized her as a bright, intellectual non-spark had she been male. Especially Merlot comes across as gynophobic. (Is that a word?) :::: So, I didn't mean that I personally expect women to be stupid! That's not the case at all. I was talking about my expectations about this work of fiction, set in the Victorian era. In the real world, at that time, it would have been pretty remarkable for Agatha to have any position at all at the university. So, knowing nothing about Klaus except that he's a macho dictator, of course I saw him overlooking her as just what I'd expect of him. Now, looking back on it, Klaus is being uncharacteristically pigheaded in not getting it. And I said what I said up there because I'm pleased that my expectations about GG turned out to be wrong. Wasn't that clear? If not, I'm sorry. Bkharvey (talk) 23:23, December 9, 2017 (UTC) ::::: Well, the Girl Genius world IS a sexist one, even if it's not quite as extreme as the same time period in our world. The nobility only considers male like potential heirs. Most of the world is ruled by men (with the notable exception of Albia). When Agatha is invited by Prince Aaronev, the Circus people literally sew her dress shut to protect her against rape. Zeetha wears leather underwear to prevent random people from using a device to publicly undress her. I wasn't really arguing about that, but rather about the argument that it would mean most female characters would be weak and stereotyped. Strong women exist in sexist worlds (Patriarchy doesn't care, it has its way of burying them and forgetting them). I think your assumption had more to do with how mainstream media portrays women. Our 19th Century Europe had strong women, women artists, women who wrote best-seller novels, women scientists. It had Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, and less remembered ones like Rachel Lloyd, Julia Lermontova, and many others. They were a small minority but they were there. The same way black men were there in 18th Century Europe (people will tell you it's "historically inaccurate", I always recommend they look up Thomas-Alexandre Dumas or the Chevalier de Saint-Georges). But media tends to only portray stereotypes in period drama. The token woman cleaning the floor or staying at home become our single expectation. ::::: In Klaus' case, however, I always saw it as "He has an Empire to run and didn't spend much time thinking through a minor mystery." On the surface, the evidence confirmed his conclusions. He should have paid more attention, but he had a hive engine and the takeover of Beetleburg to think about. As for the Beetleburg people, I think what defines their view of Agatha is their relationship to disability more than their relationship to gender (and unfortunately it is spot on. Any bright person with ADHD could identify with that situation). However, science tells us that discrimination criteria add up, so it sure didn't help Agatha to be a girl as well. MasakoRei (talk) 09:46, December 11, 2017 (UTC) ::::::: Right. "But media tends to only portray stereotypes in period drama" was my whole point. Indeed, going meta, why name the story "Girl Genius"? Because it goes counter to expectations. Even today. (Many people's expectations about reality, and everyone's expectations about "period drama.") The same reason there are now a zillion organizations with names like Girls Who Code. Bkharvey (talk) 20:07, December 11, 2017 (UTC) Aargh someone on Yahoo pointed out that they're taking "the tube," a/k/a the Underground, or, as Americans would say, the subway. Groan. Bkharvey (talk) 02:36, December 10, 2017 (UTC)